The first scientific research took place in 1969 and was published in 1970 in Science Magazine (which is one of the world's top academic journals). By my latest count, there have been 340 peer-reviewed articles published on TM, many of which have appeared in highly respected journals. For those unfamiliar with scientific publishing, peer-reviewed means that each article is subjected to scrutiny by independent reviewers who are authorities in their field. - Dr Norman Rosenthal in Transcendence: Healing and Transformation through Transcendental Meditation, 2011, p14.

“John would have been the first one now, if he had been there, to recognise and acknowledge what Maharishi has done for the world and appreciate it" - Yoko Ono (2008) "This is one of the few things that has been given to me in my life that has real value to me." - Paul McCartney (2009)" “That was the main thing through the sixties I got into India. I think that was the ONE thing in my life, I could have done without everything else "- George Harrison (1987) "It gives me great pleasure to be part of this evening. I feel the aims of this charity [David Lynch Foundation which raises funds to teach one million at-risk children to meditate] are wonderful!" - Ringo Starr (2009)

"Everybody has a birthright to enjoy abiding peace and unbounded joy, which is the essential nature of his own soul. And I hold that everybody already possesse the capacity of enjoying it, because it is already there in the innermost recess of everybody's heart." -- Maharishi

The whole point is that we are the song. The self is coming from a state of pure awareness, from the state of being

Tomorrow Never Knows (p. 209-210)

JOHN LENNON: The expression “Tomorrow Never Knows” was another of Ringo’s. I gave it a throwaway title because I was a bit self-conscious about the lyrics. So I took one of Ringo’s malapropisms, which was like “a hard day’s night”, to take the edge off the heavy philosophical lyrics.

GEORGE HARRISON: I've been wondering lately why it was supposed to be from The Tibetan Book of the Dead. It was, I think, based more upon the book by Timothy Leary called The Psychedelic Experience. The lyrics are the essence of Transcendentalism.

You can hear (and I am sure most Beatles fans have) “Tomorrow Never Knows” a lot and not know really what it is about. Basically it is saying what meditation is all about. The goal of meditation is to go beyond (that is, transcend) waking, sleeping and dreaming. So the song starts out by saying, “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream, it is not dying.”

So the song is really about transcending and about the quality of the transcendent

Robert Freeman's original design for the Revolver sleeve

GEORGE HARRISON: Then it says, “Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void – it is shining. That you may see the meaning of within – it is being.” From birth to death all we ever do is think: “we have one thought, we have another thought, another thought. Even when you are asleep you are having dreams, so there is never a time from birth to death when your mind isn’t always active with thoughts. But you can turn off your mind, and go to the part which Maharishi describes as: “Where was your last thought before you thought it?”

The whole point is that we are the song. The self is coming from a state of pure awareness, from the state of being

The whole point is that we are the song. The self is coming from a state of pure awareness, from the state of being. All the rest that comes about in the outward manifestation of the physical world (including all the fluctuations which end up as thoughts and action) is just clutter. The true nature of each soul is pure consciousness. So the song is really about transcending and about the quality of the transcendent.

I am not too sure if John actually fully understood what he was saying. He knew he was onto something when he saw those words and turned them into a song. But to have experienced what the lyrics in that song are actually about? I don't know if he fully understood it.

MAHARISHI: "One should sit in meditation prepared to lose everything. When consciousness of outside objects begins to be lost one should not begin to mourn its loss. The yogi, when he starts meditation, should not try to hang on to anything. With a free mind he should go to Being and be -- awake in himself and lost to the world."